ArtiFact or ArtiFake? - The problem of forgeries in Mesoamerican Art

We are most grateful to Dr. Karen Olsen Bruhns and Dr. Nancy L. Kelker for this eye-opening article on the widespread problem of faked pre-Columbian objects in major museums around the world. Dr. Bruhns is Director of the Cihuatán/Las Marías Archaeological Project for the Fundación Nacional de Arqueología de El Salvador (FUNDAR). Dr. Kelker is Professor of Art History at Middle Tennessee State University. In 2009 they co-authored Faking Ancient Mesoamerica.

Worldwide art and antiquities forgery is big business, yet despite periodic exposés of the more dramatic forgery rings such as that of the Bolton forgers or of individual high ticket fakes, such as the Chicago Art Institute’s faux Gauguin faun, the forgery business continues unabated. It will continue to do so just as long as there are covetous collectors who believe themselves incapable of being fooled or who have been convinced by their dealers that forgery isn’t a problem. This is especially true if the desired item has acquired a provenance dating prior to the magical year of 1970, before which, for some daft reason (pecuniary?) the art-dealing world claims forgeries were few and far between.

In the New World this assumption is especially problematic, as the earliest Precolumbian fakes and near-fakes known date back to the period of the Spanish Conquest. The dealing and collection world’s rosy view of the forgery problem is that only about 40% of any collection is potentially fraudulent. Based on our own observations and analysis of museum collection donations to which we have had access, as well as auction listings, we estimate that at this moment, a conservative estimate of the percentage of forgeries on sale or bought (and ultimately donated) within, say, the past 30 to 50 years, is about 85% and growing exponentially. Entire auctions at prestigious houses and galleries and museum exhibitions often push the 100% forgery mark.

Pic 2: Early 20th century photo of Leopoldo Batres, Museo del Templo Mayor, Mexico City (Click on image to enlarge)

Forgery of Precolumbian art really got going in the 1820s when Latin American countries overthrew Spanish rule and started participating in the modern world. Foreign investment in these countries brought resident foreigners, many of whom acquired local antiquities. These enthusiastic, if naïve, collectors formed an instant and lucrative market for innovative local artists. Ultimately, their collections found their way into museums around the world. Some of the most beloved and finest museum pieces date to this period. Although some have been considered questionable for decades and some have been determined to be inauthentic, many continue to remain on view because they are popular with the public. This is not surprising, as their artisans designed them to appeal to western taste. We should not make the mistake of assuming, as Leopoldo Batres, the author of the first book on Mexican forgeries, published in 1909, did that all forgers are ignorant and base people only capable of producing the crudest of pieces. As is the case with good business people everywhere, they know their market.

The staying power of early and even more recent fakes can best be illustrated with a few examples: the British Museum Xipe Masks, the Mexico Museum of Anthropology Olmec Wrestler, the British Museum Aztec Crystal Skull and the Rio Pesquero (various collections) stone masks and other jade doodads.

Xipe Totec Our Lord the Flayed OneAlthough The British Museum Xipe masks were thoroughly debunked by Esther Pasztory in the late 1970s, the museum’s current web site blithely presents them as genuine. In the museum world there is no beautiful artifact so false that, given a few years’ cooling off period, it cannot be made “true” again. Turning this sentence around would make it clearer. “In the museum world, the collective memory of the general public and scholarly community is apparently believed to be equivalent to the lifespan of a gnat.”

The Xipe masks are definitely in the upper echelon of forgeries. The maker of these masks was, for his time, very knowledgeable about motifs in Aztec art, and he seems to have borrowed elements from other works, such as the heavy, closed eyes of Coyolxauhqui, along with her large ear spools and striated hair. The fatal flaw in these works is to be found on the inside of the masks. Represented in bas relief are four-armed figures similar to those found in Hindu art. The Aztecs did not depict their deities as multi-armed. Pasztory suggests that this peculiar element may have been inspired by the illustrations of Isidro Gondra in William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. Gondra’s drawings were heavily influenced by his knowledge of a great many other ancient art styles: Hindu, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek (Gondra, 1844-46).

That these masks are once again presented as authentic is a tremendous problem. Museums and their curators do not want to admit that they were fooled or that a beautiful piece is modern. Forgeries often have far more appeal than genuinely ancient pieces, simply because the artist knows his time and culture and he can make pieces that fit the current view of what “native” art ought to be.

Pic 5: B/W triptych of the ‘Olmec Wrestler’ (Click on image to enlarge)

The “Olmec Wrestler”***Even more beloved than the Xipe Masks is the so-called Olmec Wrestler, a three-quarter life-sized basalt sculpture of a seated man wearing only a loincloth that is the star of the Mexico City Museum of Anthropology. Since its purchase by the museum in 1964, a lot of ink has been spilt by scholars attempting to rationalize the eccentricities of this beautifully carved piece. But no amount of hyperbole can excuse the very real fact that the work is consistent with a western canon of art rather than with an Olmec one. The piece exhibits several eccentric characteristics pointing to its maker’s familiarity with western art, including a Renaissance ratio of proportion, Classical anatomical detail, and contrappostal movement. There are also several characteristics that illustrate the artist’s unfamiliarity with Olmec monumental art, such as an incorrect loincloth, bare head, ear lobes drilled rather than carved with ear spools, and use of the wrong type of stone. Despite all of this and more, the Wrestler is passionately supported by those who see in it what they want Precolumbian art to be. This is an enormous problem because the picture of Mesoamerican history presented by such works is a false one that distorts, and thus retards, our understanding of that history.

Pic 6: The British Museum crystal skull (Click on image to enlarge)

The British Museum Crystal SkullThis piece is so well-known that it warranted a role in the latest Indiana Jones movie. However, recognition by the Hollywood fantasy machine does not make it real or Indiana Jones an archaeologist. Still, the provenance of the British Museum crystal skull is a work of fiction worthy of the cinema industry. Supposedly brought to Europe by a “Spanish officer” sometime before the French invasion of Mexico, the skull was sold to an English collector and then to M. Eugène Boban, a well-known French antiquities dealer (Riviale 2001). Boban, in turn, sold the skull to Tiffany and Company, who sold it to the British Museum.

Over the years, there have been rumblings in the scholarly community about the authenticity of the crystal skull. By 1967 the roar had become so loud that the British Museum had the skull investigated by its Research Laboratory, which examined both the base material and the fabrication of the piece.

Pic 7: To their credit, the British Museum now state on their gallery description that the crystal skull is probably a fake... (Click on image to enlarge)

The skull was determined to be made of Brazilian rock crystal (Jones 1990, 296-97), although a recent analysis suggests that the crystal may be from Madagascar (Sax et al 2008); neither of these sources was exploited by the ancient Mesoamericans. Next, the British Museum Research Laboratory concluded that the lines of the teeth were cut by a jewelers’ wheel, not by string sawing as the Aztecs would have done. This, too, was recently confirmed again with more modern equipment by Sax and his colleagues.

The piece is also inconsistent with the canon of Aztec art in that it is too anatomically detailed and western in appearance. Depictions of skulls in Aztec art are blocky and highly stylized with the facial bones compressed into a moon-shaped disk, the mandible rotated forward to create a u-shaped element. The nasal opening is triangular, the eyeballs retained in the sockets, and the teeth are set into the upper and lower jaws with a scalloped contour line.

Pic 8: ‘Mask, Veracruz? Olmec, Mexico, middle formative period (900-600BC), Robert and LIsa Sainsbury Collection, University of East Anglia’ (Click on image to enlarge)

The Rio Pesquero MasksThe discovery of the Rio (or Arroyo) Pesquero masks in southern Veracruz in 1969 appears to be another example of cinematic inspiration. According to the story told by a prominent collector who happened to be the audience for the performance, the masks were discovered by some simple fishermen who waded out into the river to get into their canoes – the wrong way. They stepped on something hard in the muddy river bottom and dove in to discover an Olmec treasure trove. Another version has them going in their canoes out to a spring in the middle of the brackish river and dropping a bucket; then, while diving in to retrieve the bucket, finding the treasure. Of course, by the time the Mexican archaeologists arrived, all the artifacts had vanished into the maw of the U.S. art market.

The Río Pesquero masks are carved from an assortment of white, gray, and greenish jadeite, some of which is mottled with darker hues of green or brown which make them very appealing to modern eyes. The ancient Mesoamericans, however, would have considered this beautiful mottling to be a flaw, preferring the unblemished stone typical of unquestionably authentic pieces. The masks all appear to the work of a single very talented carver who, in the best tradition of forgery, did not simply copy known works. The masks are well carved and highly polished and some of them feature incised designs, including were-jaguars, supernaturals, and esoteric symbols. To enhance contrast, the lines were selectively and carefully rubbed with ochre or cinnabar. Interestingly, the so-called “Sainsbury mask” was shown in recent conservation work to have had its facial embellishments carved after it had been broken and glued back together. (Leyenaar and Pillsbury 1997, 18-21).

Another problem with these masks is that they show emotion, a feature uncommon in most ancient American art. The presence of drill holes beneath the earlobes and of drilled out irises on several of these masks suggests the possibility of their having been worn and thus being ancient precursors to Colonial masking traditions. Recently, a noted Olmec scholar hypothesized that they were mummy bundle masks. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of these European masking traditions nor of mummy bundles among the ancient Olmec. Still, it shows that there is no theory too far-fetched that it cannot be used to justify a beloved artifact of spurious origin.

Why is so much of this still going on today? Besides the fact that some people want to believe so badly that anything seems plausible to them, there seems to be a serious problem in the museum world. Many museum curators, often highly earnest people, are called upon to work in areas about which they know little or nothing. Also, they are usually under immense pressure — all museum personnel are — to accept things, even obvious fakes, from wealthy donors. These are people who are financially and politically important and thus in a position to “help” the museum in other ways. This is how museums find themselves with 85% or more fakes. There are some U.S. and European museums and a couple of Latin American ones too, where the “Precolumbian” collections are actually nearly 100% “Postcolumbian”.

Pic 10: Two examples of 19th century European private collectors’ sales catalogues (Click on image to enlarge)

The art market is virtually unregulated and, even though many galleries and auction houses are dealing in stolen objects and a goodly number of fakes, legal measures are seldom taken against them. Why? In many western countries collecting antiquities is seen as a prestigious hobby and, at most, a victimless crime. And if your collection is mostly fakes? Well, no collector we have ever met has admitted to owning a single fake, and they wouldn’t believe they did no matter how many ways you proved it.

The problem is that the paradigm is wrong. People claim that looted Precolumbian art is genuine until proven fake, when the reality is that nothing can be assumed to be genuine unless it is properly excavated from a legitimate archaeological dig. Science cannot prove that your beautiful mask or Maya Codex vase is real. Perhaps it can lower the odds that it is a fake, but scientific tests such as thermoluminesence and radiocarbon dating can be forged or the results skewed by various means. So, unprovenanced works (virtually all looted or forged) accepted as genuine present a real problem. These dubious pieces usually end up in “important” collections, and, from there, move into books, art history, and archaeology classes, becoming the exemplars on which scholars are trained. Thus, they pervert current and future history as they go.

Pic 11: Side view of ‘The Wrestler’ when on display in the National Museum of Anthropology in 2006 (Click on image to enlarge)

*** Update 2015Although many people – in Europe and North America - have been loath to consider the famous “Olmec Wrestler” as a forgery - he is, after all, entirely too pretty, the archaeologists of the National Museum in Mexico City have “retired” him. No comment, as is the usual manner in official matters such as this.

The statue has been removed from its position as the centerpiece of the exhibit on the Olmec in the National Museum of Anthropology and taken to an unknown storage facility (the Mexican have an impressive collection of forgeries, although their exact whereabouts are not public). Moreover, his picture was removed so hastily from the online “Treasures of the National Museum” that for some time there was a green blank where the photograph had been (it is now completely fixed). It has also disappeared form the online collections database. Since virtually no one in the Mexican archaeological establishment has ever believed in the authenticity of the “Wrestler” the statue remained on display, because of political pressures. The Director of the National Museum was Felipe Solis, a fervent supporter of the Wrestler, therefore, despite a lot of complaining about the statue, it stayed on display. However, Solis died in 2009 and apparently enough time has passed that his friends and supporters are also either dead or retired from public life. So the Wrestler has finally been delegated to the forgeries storage facility where he should have been since he first surfaced.

Further note from the Editor:-We have been informed (July 2015) by Matthew H. Robb that the ‘Wrestler’ figure IS now back on display at the Museo Nacional. We simply aren’t sufficiently qualified ourselves to judge on this issue. For the moment we feel it right to leave this article as it is. It goes without saying, too, that whether on or off public display, widespread and serious doubts have been raised as to the authenticity of this piece...

14 At 12.11am on Saturday December 1 2018, D. Aguren wrote:

Btw, it is clear to me that The Wrestler is a self portrait of the artist, chiseling. Most likely The Wrestler itself given that it is 3/4 size. The artist is capturing his full being as a sculptor in his focused, controlled, perfect strike. I’m surprised no one has suggested this.

13 At 1.28am on Tuesday May 15 2018, Mahavrika wrote:

This article perpetuates the idea that Mesoamerican art is bound to the conceits of Western academia. Because some Anglo-American women from the 20th century have viewed this art and dismissed it as too refined, we must now accept that it’s all fraudulent. The fact that the alleged frauds are referred to as ‘beautiful’ demonstrates the authors are projecting their own Eurocentric standards onto these works, implying these European-inspired ‘fakes’ are somehow superior to Indigenous products. Mesoamerica abounds with fascinating outliers: the Mitla mosaics, the tomb of Pakal and the entire Purepecha culture. How absurd that Indigenous peoples are bound to convention and strict stylistic qualities but European art is permitted to include unusual and idiosyncratic elements. Who knows if the Aztecs never depicted four-armed gods? Apparently, these authors have such a deep insight into the Pre-Columbian imagination that they can make such sweeping judgements. A hallmark of Western academic arrogance. And of course the Olmec, a culture we know little about, must conform to the limitations placed upon them by those born 1500 years after that culture’s extinction.

12 At 11.17pm on Friday March 11 2016, CJB wrote:

Everything wrong about the Olmec Wrestler points to everything right about the Olmecs having contact with the Old World. The facial features of the wrestler are Oriental. The man dons a mustache- pure blooded Native American men are incapable of growing facial hair. The loincloth suggests an Oriental origin. Everything about the Olmec Wrestler points to Asia. Perhaps the statue isn’t fake but points to the idea that Mesoamerica and Asia were in contact with each other long before Columbus. Maybe that would explain why true jade, not jadeite, keeps showing up in Mesoamerican ruins.

11 At 10.48pm on Wednesday August 27 2014, Dmj wrote:

Argument against ‘The Wrestler’ is entirely unconvincing. The original ‘wrong rock’ ‘petrographic’ study is sophomoric at best. There are several other examples of similarly posed Olmec works that are, apparently, unknown to the self-purported experts. Meanwhile, if truly a world-class forgery, the obvious question remains: where are the other works of this sculptor. If modern, there should be many dozens and yet there appear to be none, zero, nada. Shoddy reasoning illustrating a lack of broad knowledge of Olmec culture.

10 At 9.36am on Wednesday February 26 2014, Gabe walker wrote:

The wrestler may actually be Ainu. It looks more like an Aleut dance to me. It may not be but we know the Ainu were here. Ie Kennewick man and Moche DNA. I’m pretty sure the ziggurats are real though, right?

9 At 8.03am on Wednesday November 28 2012, M-Fuchs wrote:

Dear mexicolore team.Thank you very much for your answer.If you disagree with me please contact me.You can ask me a question, and i send you a proof.We can do it.I know that y’all have been misled.I can tell you a lot of information.You can ask me.I can show all of the evidence, if you will see it.I am a simple person.I react to lies critically.But i love truth only.And i say ever truth.You can also ask me every day, what interests you.I reply ever, if i find time for you.Scientists lose credibility if they cheat.All my evidence based on the genuine finds, which archaeologists have unearthed.I can show you which distorts the truth.I ask you not to call me a scientific heretic.I do not have a scientific license to deceit.I speak about truth, witch i can ever show.You can write to me, if you will it.I can show you where and why is the truth and where and why is the deceit.All people know, that worldwide history is a political fake.Please do not confuse me, if i say truth, because i am not scientist.Governments make the commissions in this cases.Also, you write to me, if you will it and you get evidence from me.You know my Email.

Mexicolore replies: We’re not scientists, we’re educators, and this isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing with you, we simply don’t know quite what you’re trying to say. We’ll take up your offer and write to you direct...

8 At 11.21am on Tuesday November 27 2012, M. Fuchs wrote:

This is the best story.Thank you very much.I have four years analyzing Mesoamerican artifacts.Archaeologists unearth mayan incas or actec buddhist things and write about them libel.They made to this label-theory many forgeries and fakeartefacts.Archaeologists portrayed birth of a ancient people as human sacrifice.Archaeology do not say about Buddhism in ancient america.Buddhist artifacts and artifacts of inca maya and actec do not differ from each other.So i noticed that archeology is fakes frauds and forgries only.Currently, i have collected a lot of evidence of archaeological frauds.I can tell you how they distort the truth.They attribute to ancient buddhism human sacrifice and murds.Dear “archeologists”, Buddhism do not sacrifice!Archaeologists do not know the basics of the ancient shamanism taoism and buddhism.They brainwash people.I hate archeology, because they produce fake evidence (fakes, forgeries) of events, wich never existed.They invented culture of maya, incas and aztecs.And i can prove it.I can show you, how they make it.Many people worldwide do not trust archaeologists.They perform sometime political and commercial orders.People dip into arhceological and historical nazism and rassist ideology.Archaeologists and history have spoiled my life and my brain because they spread false nazist and rassist information worldwide.They write godless calumny and they deceive and confuse illiterate people.They deceive me all my life.Archaeologists portrayed other cultures like murderers (humand sacrifice, murderers... ).We had no past, wich forge archeologists and history-sciencist.I am sure that they mistranslated the ancient languages.They can also invent a new language.Because they incorrectly describe Buddhist reliefs of mayas, aztecs and incas.

Mexicolore replies: We’re tempted to delete this entry - it appears to be an OTT rant, and it’s hard to understand quite where this person is coming from. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, for the moment...

7 At 7.59pm on Wednesday May 25 2011, otirudam wrote:

The arguments you expose here about the Olmec Wrestler being a forgery sound quite inconsistent, illogical and biased. You mean to say that only Europe can produced well proportioned statues, and if any other culture does it, its surely a fake? If the Olmec Wrestler is a forgery, then the forger was a superbly accomplished sculptor that doesnt need to go into the forgery buisness. Also you seem to know so much about an almost unknwon civilization, full of puzzles and missing parts, and yet you hint you are an expert in olmec monumental art. In other words how can u be an expert in a mysterious unknown subject? Sorry it doesnt make sense. Your thesis should have better solid foundations.

6 At 6.59am on Thursday May 12 2011, B.M. Kamp wrote:

A review, or preferably a thorough re-examination is needed with regards to ‘Aztec poetry’, in particular the undated (very highly regarded) Cantares Mexicanos. I have studied the facsimile as well as the translations for some time; these ‘songs’ (without any pitch-related guidance as to music) have left me with a most uncomfortable feeling about the whole opus. Can’t help it.

5 At 11.49am on Thursday April 28 2011, conor wrote:

Amazing I never knew that the people of the world had the creativity to make this stuff!

4 At 9.24am on Tuesday April 5 2011, gael wrote:

Brilliant!

I hope there was a way of getting this message through to all visitors to archeological sites. It isn’t uncommon to be offered “authentic” pieces at this sites...

3 At 11.30am on Wednesday March 16 2011, edanien wrote:

No, Mark Cheney, 1970 is not the date before which export was not illegal. Laws had been on the books in the mentioned countries long before that date. 1970 marked the Pennsylvania Declaration, when the Penn Museum announced it would no longer accept objects without legitimate provenience. Although many museums signed on to that premise, disgracefully, many American museums still ignore that dictum, and purchase, and proudly display, smuggled objects. Oh, how I hope they’ve all been hoodwinked!

2 At 11.41am on Tuesday March 15 2011, Mark Cheney wrote:

In their article on “Artifakes”, Drs. Bruhns and Kelker state: “This is especially true if the desired item has acquired a provenance dating prior to the magical year of 1970, before which, for some daft reason (pecuniary?) the art-dealing world claims forgeries were few and far between.” Isn’t it because before certain dates it was not yet illegal to export the artifacts, e.g. Antiquities Acts of the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, and therefore they would not be guilty of smuggling if the artifact purportedly came in before that date.

1 At 3.16am on Monday March 14 2011, tecpaocelotl wrote:

Great article.The one thing I would ask is doesn’t fake artifacts show who knows their stuff and who doesn’t?